GlobalFoundries of Santa Clara, CA, USA (one of the world's largest semiconductor foundries, with more than 250 customers and operations in Singapore, Germany and the USA) has made available a new set of enhanced RF silicon-on-insulator (RF SOI) process design kits (PDKs) to help designers improve their designs of RF switches and deliver differentiated RF front-end solutions for a wide range of markets including front-end modules for mobile devices, millimeter-wave (mmWave), 5G and other high-frequency applications.

GlobalFoundries’ 7SW SOI RF technology platform is optimized for multi-band RF switching in next-generation smartphones and poised to drive innovation in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Designed for use with Coupling Wave Solutions’ (CWS) simulation tool SiPEX, its 7SW SOI PDK allows designers to integrate RF switches with other critical RF blocks that are essential to the design of complex electronic systems for future RF communication chips. Specifically, this new capability allows designers to improve RF simulation output by simulating a highly resistive substrate parasitic effect across their entire design.

GlobalFoundries says that its RF SOI technologies offer performance, integration and area advantages in front-end RF solutions for mobile devices and RF chips for high-frequency, high-bandwidth wireless infrastructure applications. CWS’ SiPEX accelerates the design of RF SOI switches by improving linearity simulation accuracy. It can also be effective in the design of low-noise amplifiers (LNA) and power amplifiers (PA), enabling designers to reduce their size to lower costs.

SiPEX is available in the current release of GlobalFoundries’ 7SW SOI PDK.

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